Michel Wieviorka teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
(EHESS), in Paris. He is also the Director of CADIS (Centre d'Analyse et
d'Intervention Sociologique) and of the monthly magazine "Le Monde des Débats".
Co-author or editor of over 20 books, he is known as a specialist on subjects
ranging from racism and multiculturalism to social movements and terrorism.

During more than two weeks, since the last days in October 2005, urban
violence has developed in suburbs around Paris, and then also in other cities.
Its main forms, its “repertoire,” to use Charles Tilly’s vocabulary, include
setting fire to private cars, on the one hand, and targeting public
institutions on the other hand—schools, for instance, and also buses (which in
France are public transportation). Every night, hundreds of cars have burned
and serious face-to-face conflict has occurred between young people and the
police, but also firemen. The situation became so tense that the government
decided, after ten days, to apply a law which had been enacted in 1955, during
the Algerian war, in order to implement a curfew, mainly directed at
minors.

In order to analyse this phenomenon, one must distinguish between three
levels, in fact, three scales of temporality.

1. The first one is long term. As analyzed in my book, Violence en
France (Paris, Seuil, 1999), this kind of urban violence has existed for
at least a quarter of a century. In the late seventies, in some suburbs near
Lyon for instance, young people were making the so-called “rodeos,” i.e.: they
stole a car (generally, a BMW), went to their own neighbourhood, their “cité,”
and drove as fast as possible, while all the inhabitants could watch them from
their home, before burning the car and disappearing. Sometimes, journalists
have been accused of paying them or at least encouraging them in order to bring
spectacular images to their magazine or TV channel. During the eighties and
nineties, there were a lot of riots, a rise in behaviours oscillating between
protest and delinquency (see François Dubet, La Galère [Paris, Fayard,
1988]) with some inventions, for instance “voiture-bélier”—a car being used as
a kind of huge hammer to break the windows of a shop and then rob it. There
were also rising feelings of hatred among youth, as demonstrated by a movie
from Kassowitz, “La haîne,” and a decline in the hope of any political
possibility of action coming from these neighbourhoods. The main moment when
such a hope existed was in 1983, when a big march for equality and against
racism started from Marseille and Lyon and reached Paris, where some of the
leaders were received by President Mitterrand. Soon after that a movement
appeared, in fact more or less sponsored by the Socialist Party, called
SOS-Racisme, which gained huge success, but more mediatic and political than
really rooted in the “cités” and the “banlieues” (one should note that some of
these “banlieues” [suburbs] are in fact located downtown, in cities for
instance such as Marseille or Roubaix).

Most of the elements that led to violence twenty five years ago are the same
today. There is a strong social component that includes various consequences of
the economic changes that happened in the seventies: the end of classical
fordist industries and forms of industrial organization, the structural
unemployment that followed, mainly for unskilled workers, social exclusion,
precarity—all these issues that William J. Wilson has described for the
American “hyperghetto.” There is also a renewed racism. In the sixties and
seventies, migrants from North Africa were usually unskilled workers who came
to France alone in order to make as much money as possible and then go back to
their country. They were called “travailleurs immigrés” (migrant workers), and
had no particular interest in French politics. They were socially included,
through work, and politically, civically and culturally excluded, for their
future was abroad. At the very moment when unemployment and crisis in classical
industries started, measures were taken by the government in order to make
possible “family regrouping”—see Patrick Weil for instance (La France et
ses étrangers, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1991)—and most of these workers chose
to stay in France, to have their family and life in this country. Their
grandchildren became more or less the contrary of what they were: socially
excluded (for they are the first not to find jobs) and politically, civically
and culturally included—they are supposed to be or become French. But racism in
France is rather strong, as I analysed in La France raciste (Paris,
Seuil, 1991)—a “symbolic racism,” to use the American categories of some
political psychologists—and they face huge difficulties in getting access to
jobs, or to housing, or in their interactions with police.

It is also in the mid-seventies that French republican institutions entered
into a process of decline, in spite of the incantatory discourse of some
intellectuals, such as Régis Debray or Alain Finkielkraut, who defended
strongly their conception of the republican idea—no minority in the public
sphere, and a hardliner defence of “laïcité” (a word that cannot be translated
into English—let us say: separation of the State and the Churches). The public
services, the police, the institutions of justice, and also especially the
public schools have been facing huge difficulties: they cannot fulfill anymore,
at least for the young migrants, the wonderful republican promise that is
summarized in the motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” This created a lot of
frustrations, and this is unique in Europe, where many migrants endure the same
social difficulties, but not the ones related to the fact that the State and
its intellectuals promise so much and do not keep their word.

Another aspect in this general crisis is that it is connected with a kind of
ethnicization, with the rise of cultural, national, regional or religious
identities that seek recognition in the public sphere, which is not easy in the
French system, dominated by the republican idea and by the notion that the
Nation has a theoretical monopoly as far as collective identity is concerned.
As I argued with some colleagues in an edited volume (Une société
fragmentée? La Découverte, 1996), and in my book La Différence
(new ed., les Editions de l’Aube, 2005), this is a huge challenge, including
issues such as memory, or the competition between victims. Islam is at the core
of this challenge. In the poor neighbourhoods, imams are now sometimes the only
actors, and at the same time, Muslims have to face a strong islamophobia,
rooted in a long history where the French stopped the Arabs in Poitiers in 732,
had a crucial role in the Crusades, then colonized North Africa, etc.

Another dimension must be taken into consideration: the decomposition, in
many of these popular neighbourhoods, of any capacity to transform social and
cultural demands into political action, the decline of most political
mediations, the more spectacular being the disappearance of the Communist
party, and of a lot of grassroots associations, sometimes connected with
larger, national organizations.

2. A second scale of temporality is shorter. It has to do with the last
three and a half years. During the seventies, eighties, nineties and early
years of this century, all governments tried to implement specific policies in
order to solve the urban crisis. They created, for instance, as early as 1982,
a kind of French version of affirmative action, with the ZEP (Zones d’Education
Prioritaires), which means that additional resources are given by the State to
some public schools that are located in popular neighbourhoods in order to give
their pupils the same chances to succeed as others. But most analysts and
political leaders admit that what was done was not enough, and strong feelings
of failure dominate the opinions on these policies. When President Chirac was
elected again, in 2002, with a solid majority in the Parliament, the Government
decided if not to make an end to all policy in this area, at least to undo most
of what existed, and before all what had been implemented by the Socialist
Government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002. They ended the so
called “police de proximité” (one could translate: community police), they
terminated the “emplois-jeunes” (public jobs for young people) and they
drastically reduced subsidies to the associations that organize social work or
various kinds of activities (sport, culture, music, etc.) in these popular
places. Suddenly, the minimum measures that may have saved these areas from
drowning were suppressed; and when the government understood it, in 2004, it
was too late.

3. A third scale of temporality is given by the present situation. In fact,
two main events contributed to setting off the riots. On the one hand, the
death of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois (near Paris), who were certain that
the police were running after them, which was not the case, and were panic
stricken, so that they hid in an electric transformer where they were
electrocuted. This was perceived as a huge injustice. In France (but one could
compare for instance to Los Angeles in 1992) riots very often start with the
news or the rumor of a police or justice misconduct, and this has been no doubt
the starting point. A second element was also important: the vocabulary used by
Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister of Interior, speaking of “racaille” (scum) and
promising to clean popular areas from delinquency with a Karcher (high pressure
cleaner-ed). These expressions, that are highly appreciated by the right and
the extreme right, were perceived by the youth in these neighbourhoods as
disqualifying all of them, and not only some delinquents.

What happened included new aspects that didn’t exist in previous riots. In
the past, they were local, and didn’t extend from one city to another. They
were also limited in time, no more than two or three nights. Today, they expand
at the national scale—and some observers consider it could become a European
phenomenon (an idea which I don’t share because there is at least a unique
dimension in France: the importance of the frustrations towards the State and
the Republican promises). The rioters are young, sometimes very young, and if
most of them are children of migrants, what is new is the importance of
sub-Saharan African origins among them. The population from sub-Saharan Africa
is more recent, and the children are less educated than the ones from Maghreb.
Another aspect in these riots is that they are not at all organized, they
produce no discourse, they don’t have any leader, any principle of
structuration, they are typically crisis behaviours, and not at all a movement.
From this point of view, they are the very contrary to May 68, as analysed for
instance by Alain Touraine, speaking of a new social movement, or Claude
Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis and Edgar Morin, speaking of a cultural one. They
express, they condense a lot of issues, but are not political. This does not
mean they lack rationality. The young rioters, for instance, are violent but
they are rather careful with ordinary people. They burn cars or buses, they
fight with the police, but they don’t attack people. They have an impressive
capacity in meeting somewhere very quickly and disappearing as quickly, with
the use of mobile phones much more than internet. They are part of the
contemporary culture.

An important point must be underlined. Contrary to what has been sometimes
said, radical Islam has nothing to do with these riots. There are no religious
dimensions in the violence, which is first of all social. But Islam is present
in the situation: in many cases, local imams or national Muslim leaders
appeared as preaching peace, asking the youth not to use violence. If there is
a problem, it is not Islamic violence, but the fact that the French Republic is
resting on the capacity of religious leaders to organize the peace and social
calm in popular areas. This leads us to examine the idea of a decline of the
French republican model.

4. This violence means much more than a limited crisis. It is one
expression, among others, of the decline, and maybe the collapse, of the French
model of integration. This model is exploding, in all its dimensions. Today,
France is facing a general challenge, a total crisis where the social, the
institutional, the political and the cultural elements each call for huge
changes, and where they don’t seem to be conciliated, as was the case when
industrial society, State institutions and the Nation as a collective identity
were in a direct correspondence. The French model is so deeply damaged that in
order to finish with the riots, the Government not only relied exclusively on
police forces, but also behaved as in times of war, with the curfew. The
political challenge is clear: when this violence ends—which all political
actors and, in general, the population hope—how will it be possible to return
from military or police policies, to social ones in order to deal with all the
issues that the violence condenses?

A limited answer, as the one proposed by the prime minister to increase some
social measures (for instance, subsidies to associations specialized in social
work), is not enough. What is at stake is the capacity of French political
parties, and maybe intellectuals, to reinvent a formula combining the social
and the economic, articulating solidarity, the Welfare State, a new system of
redistribution, but also a renewal in institutions, a more opened policy
towards minorities and cultural identities, a stronger stand against racism and
discrimination, on the one hand, and on the other, economic rationality and
efficacy, which means acceptance of participation in globalization processes
and not attitudes of withdrawal, whether their meaning be in the name of the
Nation, in order to try and save the old and collapsing social model, or to
defend a too retracted notion of the Republic.

On the right side of the political spectrum, two main discourses dominate.
On the one hand, Nicolas Sarkozy defends an original formula, combining
economic liberalism, the idea that police are at the front line before any
social treatment of the crisis, and some opening to religious Muslim leaders
who are supposed to ensure calm in popular areas. And on the other hand,
Dominique de Villepin, as Chirac’s political child, proposes to defend the
social and republican model, but doesn’t seem willing or able to introduce
important reforms. Should we expect more from the left? Today, the Socialist
Party is preoccupied much more by deciding who will be their presidential
candidate than by anything else. And it is very difficult for them to speak
clearly and loudly, because they don’t want to oppose public opinion and
criticize any serious effort to end the violence, which means police, though
they consider social and preventive actions a priority. This is not very
encouraging, and this is why the National Front is so popular in recent
surveys.